Trends in wear and corrosion

How have current trends in the cement industry impacted the wear and corrosion space?

Wear-Concepts provides solutions to industries that suffer from material handling problems, such as: impact abrasion, sliding abrasion, corrosion, and sticking. When coal only was being burned, everyone pretty much knew what the problems were and how to fix them. The current trend of using alternative fuels (which are cheaper than coal) has been the most challenging for Wear-Con’s cement industry customers. The use of carpet fibres, petcoke, waste fluids, waste grain, and trash in systems that were designed for coal has created a whole new set of problems. These problems include increased sticking, increased corrosion, increased wear, and an increase of a combination of these issues.

How have you needed to adapt your offering to the cement industry to meet these challenges?

Our wear specialists must evaluate each system individually now more than ever to develop a strategy to combat the new issues created by the different alternative fuels. Because of the new combination flow problems, we have had to be even more consultative in offering unique solutions.

Carpet fibers tend to hang up, build up, and cause clogging. The use of Densit® monolithic wear lining has eliminated carpet fibers from catching and clogging, while providing an affordable wear solution to sliding abrasion.

Petcoke is both sticky and abrasive. The use of INERTIA™ tactical stainless wear plate has reduced obstructive build-up, while being wear resistant.

Waste fluids – such as oils, solvents, paints and the like – can not only create sticking issues but also corrosion. Down line acid dew points are extremely corrosive. Densit® is also effective both before and after the burn in protecting against corrosion and sticking.

Grain is far more abrasive than most think. We’ve been addressing wear in the grain industry for twenty years. There are a variety of material flow solutions that can be used to remedy this kind of wear depending on the circumstances. What needs to be kept in mind though is that grain is highly combustible and can explode! We consider things blowing up to be a wear problem.

The burning of trash presents its own new set of nasty challenges of abrasion, corrosion, and sticking. This destructive combination comes from so many unknown kinds of waste entering into your system. Paper, plastic, metals, vegetation, food (animal and vegetable) and chemicals are just some of the garbage that gets incinerated. Again, we must address every issue as a unique problem that must have its own unique solution.

In your view, what will be the future wear and corrosion challenges to face the cement industry and how are these to be dealt with?

Wear-Concepts has been dealing with issues from AFs for years with other industries before cement started using them. That helped us get ahead of the curve. Therefore, we expect to see wear, corrosion, and residue build-up in the cement manufacturing plants in areas where previously there had been none.

About the authors: Dennis Todd is President and CEO and James Huey is Sales Manager at Wear-Concepts Inc. a speciality supplier, designer, and installer of wear and abrasion resistant products based in Liberty, Missouri, US.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/product-news/09032018/trends-in-wear-and-corrosion/